Sunday, the best day

Wow, it is Sunday again.  Every week I tell myself I am going to plan the following Sunday on Monday so that I have time to get the ingredients I need.  I never do; hence yesterday's adventure looking for passion fruit pulp.  Thank God for the health food store, at least I was able to find juice, which I spent about half an hour this morning reducing by half for the marinade and the vinegarette.  Done!

While that was reducing and since I had so many oranges left from last weekend and the I needed 2 cups of fresh juice between the day's recipes I zested and then squeezed 13 oranges.  I have enough juice and zest left, I made orange scones.  I used to make scones all the time.  One very valuable lesson learned (the hard way, ok who knows me?  How else do I learn things?), never take something you love to do, and then turn it into work.  After parting with my share of the coffee house, my recipes and my scones parted with me and for years I hated baking them.  It's fun again.  My recipe, one very long in the experimental stages until I was happy with it, was actually for lemon scones.  I substituted orange for lemon and then half almond flour for half of the white flour.  I am sure, that much like my homemade ricotta would elicit a response from cheese purist, my scones would do so with a scone purist.  But, damn, were they good!  I took some of the homemade ricotta, which seems to finish with the consistency of marscapone, added some honey and orange zest and substituted that for the traditional clotted cream that the English use.

So the day began well.  I am having a latte right now, the dryer is cranking and I am counting down the hours until I can use my new kitchen gadget.  Tongs.  I hate tongs.  Once the spring has sprung, they are useless.  The Lemon Tree Shoppe in Cooperstown (if you are coming up Chestnut St into town from the lake side, make a right at the light onto Main Street if you are heading north, make a left) has the absolute coolest stuff and a lot of it is kitchen stuff.  I love kitchen stuff!  I bought a pair...wait for it...of gravity activated tongs.  Hold 'em open end up and they close, point them to the ground, squeeze them and they open!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Ahhhhhhhhhh, it was as though the heavens were singing.  This was the very place I purchased my espresso / coffee machine, a Krups unit that I love.  I love this store, it is as addictive for me as a shoe store or an accessory store.  Some people might call it drug-like.  I prefer to think of the store as the solution to the problem I have not yet, but will eventually, have.  They don't have a website, or I would have included a link.  Next time you are out this way, and with the Baseball Hall of Fame right here at some point you are bound to be, stop in.  And while you are visit the Fenimore Art Museum a cultural gem.  An exhibition of American Impressionism opens next weekend.  A Mary Cassett in Cooperstown, NY, who'da thought could ever happen?

I will post pictures tomorrow.  The salad with the pretty pansies will be worth seeing all by itself!